One hundred miners trained as firefighters were brought in from other Consol mines in Pennsylvania and three other states to battle the fire. On January 14 the company reported the fire was still smouldering.

Karl Lasher, a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) spokesperson, said it was "way too early to speculate" on what caused the blaze. Consol vice-president Thomas Hoffman said hot rollers on the conveyor could have ignited the fire.

A union mine, Eighty-Four mine was the scene of a recent United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) victory in defense of job safety. The union successfully appealed in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court a waiver by the DEP that relaxed rules on pre-shift safety inspections in the mine. Such inspections are designed to detect and deal with problems like hot rollers before they start a fire.

The union noted that "with mine conditions ever changing and hazards developing quickly...the DEP’s decision placed workers at greater risk." UMWA president Cecil Roberts said that they "have been concerned for some time about the enforcement and approval decisions made by [DEP official] Richard Stickler."

Last year Eighty-Four mine produced about 4 million tons of coal. That year the mine had a fatal accident when miner George Shirley was electrocuted as the ram car he was operating hit an electrical cable.

The last time a Consol mine had a fire was in 1999 at the Loveridge mine in northern West Virginia, also a longwall mine. That fire caused a methane explosion and lasted for weeks, eventually closing the mine for two years.

Two miners were killed by a methane explosion in the wake of a fire at RAG American Coal’s Willow Creek longwall mine in Colorado in 2000. The fire broke out on the longwall face during production. The crew sought to fight the fire but before they were able to get it under control, the blaze ignited a pocket of methane gas. Two other miners were seriously injured.  
 
 
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